Final Report Summary - LONGEVITYBYCAUSE (Cause of Death Contribution to Longevity: Modeling Time Trends.)
New methodologies were developed with the aim of understanding the potential extension of life of nations' burden of disease or of human made mortality (for example, suicide and homicide). Although, our aim has always been thinking on the possible gains in life, it is also possible to reverse the ideas to look instead at the number of life years lost due to the lagging behind in health of some nations.
Among the innovative developments of this project were the possibility to expand our perspective of analysis to include also longitudinal perspectives, that follow populations from birth to the last age attained. As such it was possible to observe the great differential existent between nations if they are compared based on their history of mortality, as opposed as based only on the current mortality situation.
Populations differ by age-composition, sex-composition, but also by their mortality composition. Thus, questions on the longevity of populations that have different comorbidity of diseases, different distribution of causes of death and different ages at death were assessed. The main finding is as expected that there is great variability and that some of those differences are actually expanding over time.
Finally, applications of the main methodologies to case studies of, for example, maternal mortality, or violence, helped moving the relevance of the methodology developed in this project beyond the purely academic debate to try to attract the public awareness of some of the dimensions of the problems faced by populations where longevity is even reversed in some cases.
Among the innovative developments of this project were the possibility to expand our perspective of analysis to include also longitudinal perspectives, that follow populations from birth to the last age attained. As such it was possible to observe the great differential existent between nations if they are compared based on their history of mortality, as opposed as based only on the current mortality situation.
Populations differ by age-composition, sex-composition, but also by their mortality composition. Thus, questions on the longevity of populations that have different comorbidity of diseases, different distribution of causes of death and different ages at death were assessed. The main finding is as expected that there is great variability and that some of those differences are actually expanding over time.
Finally, applications of the main methodologies to case studies of, for example, maternal mortality, or violence, helped moving the relevance of the methodology developed in this project beyond the purely academic debate to try to attract the public awareness of some of the dimensions of the problems faced by populations where longevity is even reversed in some cases.